Although the studio has changed dramatically in the past year, the way Pixar employees work has not changed, and it is still as casual as Eric saw a year ago.

Except that a young female employee recognized Eric as she passed through the office and called out a bunch of sisters to jump out and ask for a few autographs, Eric's arrival did not cause any major reaction.

In a screening room, Eric watched the finished Toy Story film, along with John Lasseter and several other Pixar leaders, and although there was no sound, the finished footage was still very interesting, at least Joanna, who was sitting next to Eric, watched it with relish.

Compared with the original version in memory, this version of "Toy Story" has indeed been greatly improved in detail, the picture is more delicate and realistic, and the action of the toy is more flexible.

After watching the finished film, Eric chatted with John Lasseter for a while, and after making some affirmation of the finished product, John Lasseter finally asked, "Eric, I think you came here today not just to see the success of our production, right?"

Eric smiled and gestured to Pixar's CTO sitting next to John Lasseter, "Of course, actually, I'm here to find Mr. Ed Carmore. ”

Ed Camor had never been too interested, and if it weren't for Eric's status as the big boss, Ed Carmore would have gone into his office to study technology, and he still liked work more than socializing.

Seeing Eric suddenly pointing at him, Ed Carmore came to his senses from a technical question: "Looking for me?"

"Yes, let's go to the conference room and talk. Eric said, standing up.

The group moved to the conference room. Eric sat down at the top. Alan took out a stack of papers from his official bag and handed them out to Ed Carmore and John Lasseter.

"Originally, Mr. Stan Winston was supposed to come too, but he was entangled in something and couldn't get out of it, so I, a layman, had to come and talk about it. I've read some of the information before, but if there's anything unrealistic, feel free to bring it up. ”

Hearing Eric's solemn words, Ed Camor and John Lasseter both nodded solemnly.

Eric quickly added, "This is a plan I made with Stan's help during the filming of 'The Ghost Is Not Dead.' Regarding the software engineering scheme of film and television special effects technology, you can take a look at it first, and we will talk about it later. ”

Ed Carmore and John Lasseter opened the text that Alan had just given them in front of them, and as they read the text, John Lasseter was better, but Ed Carmore showed a shocked expression, he was a doctor of computer technology, so it was a little more profound to imagine the huge scale of Eric's plan.

In the article, Eric proposes a solution that seems to Ed Carmore to be somewhat unrealistic. He wanted to create a top-notch technical team to software engineer the computer special effects technology used in future films.

Generally speaking. In a film that uses computer special effects, and the director of the film has a problem, for example, he wants a living person in the shot to melt like a heated candle, then the engineers in the computer effects department will develop the corresponding program code to solve this problem. In general, when this problem is solved, the code becomes useless.

In Eric's vision, he really hopes to further process these useless numbers into a fixed set of software, which can be used directly if he encounters the same kind of special effects problem.

Although many movies have begun to use computers to produce special effects, in general, computer special effects are still in the era of model special effects.

Therefore, Eric's plan is very impractical and extremely wasteful in the opinion of the expert Ed Carmol, after all, it is quite time-consuming and labor-intensive to develop the corresponding code program to solve the special effects problem, and if it is reprocessed into software, it will be a waste of time and money, and whether the processed software can be used in the future is also a very big problem.

The two read Eric's plan in detail, then looked up.

Eric shrugged, "Okay, if you have any questions, just bring them up, John, you say it first." ”

"Eric, I don't think it's necessary, it's a waste. John Lasseter was very blunt.

"Ed, what about you?"

"I think the same as John is that it's a very wasteful thing to do. "In the case of Toy Story, it took our team a month to write the code to solve the problem of Cowboy Woody's facial expressions being more realistic. However, if you want to make this set of code into software, the time consumed must exceed the time of writing the code, and after making the software, you also need to upgrade and maintain the software with the upgrading of computer hardware, which is another consumption. And this software, it is difficult to say whether it can be used again in the future, even if there is a sequel to "Toy Story", it can be used three or four times at most, or four or five times. ”

Eric nodded: "I understand what you mean, but for this point, I have already given a solution in the plan, and we will set up a very professional evaluation team to evaluate the usability of the special effects program, classify the code programs developed by the technicians to solve the special effects problems, and then select the programs that are most likely to be used in the future for software engineering." ”

John Lasseter asked, "Eric, I want to know, why are you doing this? There are still very few movies that use computer special effects, and model effects are much cheaper than computer effects, and a lot more realistic, I can't think of any producer who would give up cheap and realistic computer effects and use expensive, but not very good computer effects." ”

"Because I have a hunch that computer effects will become the mainstream of film and television effects in the future, and I can't prove my claim right now, but it won't be long before James Cameron's Terminator 2 and my Jurassic Park project are completed," Eric said. (To be continued......)